I Like To Hear That Bird Sing by Late TV: Review

by Damien Reid December 13, 2022

December 13, 2022

I Like To Hear That Bird Sing by Late TV: Review

“I Like to Hear That Bird Sing” approaches emotional existential dilemmas, drifting along on a haze in the breeze rather than charging headlong into them. Aesthetic of a soulful ballad in yacht rock. The soundtrack is bubbling with humming synthesizers that are reminiscent of Ned Doheny’s famous song “Get It Up for Love” and glistening guitars that sparkle like the chrome of an old car on a hot summer day. The Police-influenced metallic New Wave, especially Andy Summer’s going-to-chime guitar work, abrupt turnarounds, and short bursts of it pepper this blissed-out slow jam. These verses are meant to shake the listener out of their reverie, either by sending a tremor through their body as they fall asleep or by simulating a car drifting onto the side of the highway when the driver loses concentration.

Jazz musicians and art rock bands, B-movies and trash television, as well as Lynch and Tarantino, are some of the influences that Late TV has drawn from. They are the moonlighting house band for a bizarre all-night dream club hidden among the cultural relics of television’s late-night programming. The band was founded in Kidderminster by musician Luke J. Novak and drummer Richard ‘Beu’ Bowman. In London, they connected with Chicago-based bassist Ryan Szanyi and Paris-based keyboard master Martin Coxall. The song “I Like to Hear That Bird Sing” is from the group’s upcoming debut album, on which they explore the age-old existential dilemmas using the shards of our dispersed culture, postmodern wastelands of pop as high-brow/low-brow mutant junk dwellers and building a hazardously irresistible cultural phenomenon.